Alison Westermann and David Westermann

[00:04] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Hi, I'm Allison Westermann I'm 42. Today is February 3rd, 2023, and I'm here in El Paso, Texas, with David Westermann my husband.

[00:19] DAVID WESTERMANN: Hi, I'm David Westermann I'm also 42 years old. It is also 2-3-2, 2023. I'm here all in Paso with my wife, Allison.

[00:33] ALLISON WESTERMANN: So I was looking at the list of questions ahead of time about raising kids, and we've had some great conversations over the years about raising our two kids. And I thought, maybe you want to pick one of the questions and ask me. Or I can pick one and ask you.

[00:55] DAVID WESTERMANN: How has being a parent changed you?

[00:59] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I'd like to say it changed me, but, you know, it probably hasn't. I'm still pretty. I don't know. It's changed me in ways that I'm probably not aware of. Right. I think that being a parent opens my eyes to other people's kids. And I'm often comparing our children, especially when Sam was little, comparing him and his growth and development to the other kids of that social group from the Baby Cafe that we were part of. And if he was advanced or if he was behind them. That was something that I was kind of obsessed with when he was little. And then when Dina came along, I was way less obsessed with it, I think. I don't know. What do you think? Do you think I chilled out as a parent? Have you noticed me changing?

[02:08] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yes.

[02:09] ALLISON WESTERMANN: What have you noticed?

[02:11] DAVID WESTERMANN: It's you, I think. I think because of the kids and the connection that they sort of necessarily forge between family, you have changed a lot of your mentality on things and your flexibility to the rest of the family's needs. And in some ways, you've hardened your stance on some things as well. Well, you know, I think there's a level at which if your parents had had. Your parents had asked you, I don't know. I don't know what they would have asked you, but if they'd asked you some particular thing, I think with kids, you've been like, no, I'm not doing that. I've got kids to think of. Whereas if we never had children, you would have been like, sure, mom and dad, we'll move to Florida. But with kids, I think it changes a lot. There's a lot of perspective that gets altered having kids where you think. I think you think outside yourself a lot more because of children. There's a lot of like, well, I could pursue X, but with the kids and everything that the logistics of it, you sort of really Evaluate, like, how important is whatever X And you do. You change your mentality around things because you don't just have one kid, you've got two kids, and it really changes things.

[03:51] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah. That reminds me of when I experimented with being a singer songwriter and sort of tried that out as a career path. And it was so much more work and being away from home and being away from family and traveling and that I didn't anticipate that ahead of time. And it would have taken resources away from us as a family rather than bringing in money like I had hoped it would do. It was actually taking me away and taking resources away from. We just had Sam at the time.

[04:32] DAVID WESTERMANN: But.

[04:34] ALLISON WESTERMANN: But yeah, I absolutely changed career paths and career ideas because of that. I guess I hadn't thought about it that way, but, like, articulating it now is helpful. I've seen you change a great deal As a parent, Mr. I didn't even want kids necessarily. And now you got two of them.

[05:01] DAVID WESTERMANN: In my defense, it wasn't that I didn't want kids. I was indifferent to having.

[05:07] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Oh, okay. Am.

[05:10] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah, you were. I mean, I was never against it.

[05:18] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I think you've changed a bit being a parent. I think you are. Well, you're definitely the fun one. I'm learning that from you. And I am inspired by how you find fun in basic things that you do with the kids. And you're often more apt to turn something into a game than I am. I have these tendencies to, like, dig in and tell the kids no, and then they dig in and defy me. And then you come in and you're like, let's turn it into a game. And then they love games and go along with you. So I learned that from you. And I think that's something that I appreciate a lot about watching you as a dad and watching you grow as a dad makes me appreciate you more.

[06:25] DAVID WESTERMANN: That was the thing I learned right. About myself, was because I did. I came from this place of ambivalence. Right. Like kids. No kids, whatever. And you always wanted kids. So, yeah, we had the kids. And then that was. I didn't know that, like, how much I wanted to be a dad until I was a dad. It's like my favorite thing. I really like being a dad. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be hit so hard by empty nest. Like in 10 years or 12 years, whatever.

[06:54] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Five years.

[06:55] DAVID WESTERMANN: No, no.

[06:55] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Emptiness, not empty nest.

[07:00] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah. When she goes to college and the house is empty, I'll probably be like, oh, I got nothing to do.

[07:07] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And that's when I will go get an 80 hour a week job.

[07:11] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah, I'll need a hobby.

[07:13] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[07:14] DAVID WESTERMANN: But I, I do, I, I, that was the thing I wasn't aware that I, I really wanted to do was be a dad. And I really enjoy being a dad. And I think, I think as far as how has being a parent changed me? I think I, it has become my, my identity as being a dad for the most part. And yeah, I work and stuff, but like, I, I feel like that is like the thing I really enjoy doing. And the kids have, I think, not purposefully, but inadvertently. Having children has given me like, almost like a sense of courage. Right. Like, particularly in social situations. Whatever the kids, like, whatever. If the kids need to go do something, then fine. Like, I would never have chosen to go.

[08:08] ALLISON WESTERMANN: If Dina asks you to dance in public.

[08:11] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah. So that one.

[08:14] ALLISON WESTERMANN: But yes, you've done it.

[08:19] DAVID WESTERMANN: But yeah, I do. I, I, Parenting has been fun. I really enjoy it. It's, it's been a good time. It's, that was unexpected to me. I did not know how much I was going to enjoy having kids. And like you and I have discussed in the past, it wouldn't have been wrong to not have kids. Right, Right. There was no wrong answer there. I think if we, if we hadn't had children at all, yeah, we would have had a lot more disposable income, but our lives would be like significantly different. We might still have a house, we might still do that, but we might travel more. Or maybe you would travel more and I would stay home. I mean, but like our lives would be significantly different and there's nothing wrong with how our lives would have turned out. I don't think the kids are what, like, keep us together. Our marriage isn't like, we have a very strong marriage. I think, I agree, but I think it would have been different. It may have, there may have been additional challenges to what we wanted to do with our lives if the kids hadn't been there. That, like I was saying before. Right. Like, they help make decisions around what you're doing because you have to think, how does this affect the kids? Right. And I know that like, there's some people be like, oh, kids are a problem because I want to go and travel the world. Like, yeah, but you know what, once you have the kids, the travel the world thing is like, yeah, that would be fun. But you know what else is fun? Going to Disney with my kids. And is that traveling the world? No. But is it super fun?

[09:47] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yes.

[09:47] DAVID WESTERMANN: There's taking A four year old to Disneyland was the most magical experience. It really was like, I know she doesn't crying.

[09:56] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I know the princesses. It was almost like reliving it as a child myself.

[10:03] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. She doesn't remember it, but that was a truly magical experience to take her there and to have her. These princesses are real to her. And it was so, so amazing.

[10:14] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[10:15] DAVID WESTERMANN: And then even last year, going to the amusement park, what was that one?

[10:21] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Silver.

[10:22] DAVID WESTERMANN: Silver Dollar City. Right. Like, there's not as much magic as Silver Dollar City, but the kids still had a real. Like, I had more fun because the kids had so much fun.

[10:31] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And even vicarious.

[10:33] DAVID WESTERMANN: Vicariously. Right. Like even just watching you and Dina go on that same ride over and over and over five, six times, whatever it was, was still super fun, even for me. Just sitting, standing off to the side, not wanting to get motion sick. But watching you guys go back and forth in her energy.

[10:54] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[10:55] DAVID WESTERMANN: Was infectious. And she just said, I'm. I can't wait to go do it again. Like, it was so much fun to just live through the kids. And honestly, if she had said, dad, you're going on this ride, I would have been on that ride. I was gonna do roller coasters. I know.

[11:11] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[11:12] DAVID WESTERMANN: That way, thankfully, because I love it. But if the kids say, dad, I need you to be on the roller coaster, well, guess what? Dad's gonna be on the roller coaster.

[11:22] ALLISON WESTERMANN: If mom can't, mom always will. Mom loves roller coasters. So I have a question for you about living here in El Paso. Right. When we moved here in 2007, when we chose to move here because your work offered you the opportunity to move us down here, and we fell in love with this place, I don't think we realized what that meant long term. I think we saw an inexpensive location with great quality of life, great weather, good schools for if we ever had kids. You know, at the time, we were just the two of us. I think reflecting on that move now I'm super grateful that we moved here. Like, I don't think ever. There's been a time in the last 15 years where I have regretted it. Other than the fact that we're far.

[12:31] DAVID WESTERMANN: Away from family, that is a hard part.

[12:33] ALLISON WESTERMANN: But I am so grateful for living where we live because it gives our kids these opportunities that you and I didn't have growing up. The being close to the border, being in a town that is majority minority, you know, it. It gives our kids an opportunity to live in a way that is impossible up in Chicago with all the Segregation, they never would have gotten this kind of immersion. Right.

[13:10] DAVID WESTERMANN: So I think this is another one of those fun, there's no wrong answer types of things. Right. If we had stayed in Chicago, our lives would have been different.

[13:19] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[13:20] DAVID WESTERMANN: And I'm. That's not to say they would have been necessarily worse, but they definitely would have been different. We've talked about this before. Like, hypothetically, if we'd stayed there, there's a good chance we would have only had the one kid.

[13:31] ALLISON WESTERMANN: That's true.

[13:31] DAVID WESTERMANN: From cost of living perspective, from trying to afford child care. Child care plus housing, you would have to. You spent, what, the first 12 years of having children, you basically didn't work. And I value that so much. Yeah. That would have been. That would have been so hard in a place like Chicago. And that's not to say we wouldn't have. The kids wouldn't have had other advantages. Right. Chicago does have other advantages. There is diversity there. You have to, I think, seek it out. It's a little more of a you have to pursue it type of thing. But there's fantastic museums and libraries and, you know, anything you get with a big, large city like that, I think. I think those things would have been advantageous. But I think from a. Like you were saying, from a. From a personal experience, culturally, I think El Paso has been better than we would have gotten in Chicago. Now, I moved a lot as a kid.

[14:38] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Right.

[14:38] DAVID WESTERMANN: I mean, I never thought. I never thought it was a lot until.

[14:41] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Until you met me.

[14:42] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. Until I went to college and really started meeting other people and realize that people don't move every four or five years.

[14:49] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[14:49] DAVID WESTERMANN: And going through the different places I lived between Colorado, Oklahoma, New Jersey, Illinois, I did not even experience as much diversity as I think the kids get here in El Paso. And it's. It's. Like you said, it's a. It's a majority, minority thing. Right. We've got white kids in. In a very Mexican culture. And growing up in the different places I did, it was still for better or for worse, white culture everywhere we went. Right. And which isn't, I think, surprising in a place like Oklahoma. I thoroughly enjoyed Oklahoma. The people we lived around in here and stuff, but it was very nice. We did. But even in New Jersey, we ended up in a very white area, which is to say that's just sort of how it happened. You know, my parents found the homes they could afford in the areas they could afford that had the schools that were as best they could get. And without diving into a world of economic Diversity and you know, all that types of history in America that ended up putting us in very white areas. Right. And I think here having the kids have such an advantage to grow up in just a not white area. I think their perspective on the world and it could go either way. It could be for better or for worse. They could end up jaded and indifferent and angry for different reasons. They could become, you know, incels and.

[16:34] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And you know, I think that's unlikely.

[16:36] DAVID WESTERMANN: Mega incel folks that are just angry that they see minorities everywhere and not enough white people in replacement theory. Nons. I, I know that.

[16:45] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I don't think our kids would ever fall into that.

[16:47] DAVID WESTERMANN: No, we, we do our best to, you know, woke them as much as possible, but like there's, there's a potential there. But I think in the end, I think that they have the advantage of growing up in a bilingual community. In schools that, where they're taking bilingual courses, everything is, everything is Spanish and English, it's all bilingual. And then I know you'll want to get into this, so I'll just go ahead and bring it up. They've got the religious diversity also. They've got a mother who grew up aggressively Jewish in a family that was aggressively Jewish.

[17:30] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yes.

[17:31] DAVID WESTERMANN: And then they've got the, the experience with my family of really it's, you know, secularly. Secularly Christian. Yeah, you know, the minimal amount of Christian. But I think it works in their favor. I think they will have this experience right already. They have the experience of when they're at school and kids ask them about Christmas, they can say, oh yeah, for Christmas I got X because grandma and grandpa have Christmas. But they also get to say, by the way, I also did Hanukkah and for eight nights I got presents and gifts. And here's what Hanukkah is. And, and I think at least in some small way, the children in their classes with them will benefit from knowing our children. Because our kids are perhaps not as aggressively Jewish as you are.

[18:31] ALLISON WESTERMANN: No, but they're proud.

[18:32] DAVID WESTERMANN: But they are proudly Jewish and they are happy to talk about it. They're not ashamed of it. They don't hide it. They're very openly Jewish. And I think, I think that's a benefit. The more, I strongly believe the more experience people have with people who are other from them, the richer their lives will be. And I, I think it breeds a more compassionate and more tolerant culture across the board. I, I wish everybody could have those types of experiences. The immersion into something they're uncomfortable with type of thing.

[19:15] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah, absolutely.

[19:16] DAVID WESTERMANN: I think when they're kids, in particular.

[19:19] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Especially when they're kids. I know that my visits to the elementary school while Sam was there had such an impact on his. The students in his class, because by the time they were in fifth grade and getting ready to go off to middle school, they had already asked all the, you know, burning questions that they had about Judaism and what is Hanukkah and what isn't Hanukkah. And they were able to ask Sam or they were able to ask me, and I tried to come in to the classroom and visit. On the topic of other holidays too, because I didn't want them to think that Judaism was just Hanukkah. I wanted them to know about the holidays that we have throughout the rest of the year. And working for PJ Library really gave me the access to, like, the educational materials and made it super easy to do that. But I think, you know, my mom did that growing up. She would come and visit and do that kind of education. And I know that it's a very common thing for Jewish parents to come and visit their kids classrooms and especially at Hanukkah time, because it feels, like, relevant.

[20:40] DAVID WESTERMANN: Isn't it funny, though, that, like, I don't know, I. I think maybe this is wrong, but I think that even if other kids grew up thinking Jewish is just Hanukkah, like, that's. That's the only frame of reference they know something. Only frame of reference they have, they at least grew up knowing a Jewish kid and they know about Hanukkah. And it would be one of those things where they. I don't know, they'd be watching reruns of Seinfeld or something like that, right? And they. They would hear a reference to Hunk and they go, oh, I know what that is.

[21:13] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah, right.

[21:14] DAVID WESTERMANN: They'd be a little bit more in on, you know, well, if that show, they'd be in on the joke, but in reality, they would be simply just a little bit richer in their culture.

[21:23] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah, I was gonna say cultural references wouldn't go over their heads.

[21:26] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. And I mean, ideally. Right. Ideally they'd know that Judaism is more than just Hanukkah. But in fact, maybe it would just be enough that they would be in college someday and it would be Hanukkah, and they would hear a reference. Don't even know someone, just hear reference to Hanukkah on TV and just go, well, wait a second.

[21:44] ALLISON WESTERMANN: What it.

[21:44] DAVID WESTERMANN: You know, and now they're going down the rabbit hole on Wikipedia, right? And it's entirely possible they never knew anyone their entire life was Jewish. They wouldn't have that interest. But it's enough of a sort of. I mean I didn't know anyone Jewish until I was in college.

[21:59] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Well, you didn't know that you knew Jewish people.

[22:01] DAVID WESTERMANN: I didn't know that I knew Jewish people until I was in college. That's true. Yes.

[22:07] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Now that you know.

[22:09] DAVID WESTERMANN: But they, they weren't. I don't remember their parents coming in. I don't remember learning anything. And I certainly don't remember them expressing feeling othered by being in the school with us. I mean I. The one kid, I mean way back in elementary school there was a kid whose last name was Rosen. I had some pretty good chance he was Jewish, but I. I would have never thought.

[22:37] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[22:38] DAVID WESTERMANN: He never expressed in any way. And it's possible that maybe his father was Jewish and his mother was Christian. But I, for all I knew he was just like me.

[22:47] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[22:47] DAVID WESTERMANN: And it wasn't until, you know, college. Right. And I guess I should mention. Right. For purposes of. What does that mean just like me. I grew up Christian with my family. Right. And I didn't convert until we got married. So I'm Jewish now. But like it's entirely. But I missed it. I missed out. Didn't miss out. I guess I did miss out. But like I didn't know.

[23:11] ALLISON WESTERMANN: You didn't know what you were missing?

[23:13] DAVID WESTERMANN: I didn't know what I didn't know. And looking back, I learned so much in college, particularly from you. But there was. It was such a rich experience, just college in general. Because we were right. We went to big giant college. There's people of all walks of life there.

[23:30] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And I very eye opening.

[23:33] DAVID WESTERMANN: I still think for our children whether or not college is necessary to get a quote unquote good job. I would want them to have the experience of going away from home to being among people who aren't necessarily like them, who grew up, not necessarily like them. To experience that walk of life where you meet that kid who graduated. You know. I did. Anyway, there was that one kid I met. I graduated first in my class. Wow, that's. That's an amazing accomplishment. Well, my class was 27 people. Right. One. Your high school, your graduating class is 27 people. That was. Yeah, right. For me, my graduating class is only at 200 some. I know yours was much.

[24:13] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Mine was a thousand.

[24:14] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah, yours was a thousand. And it's interesting to. You know, you could.

[24:18] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I was not the top of my class.

[24:21] DAVID WESTERMANN: But you do you walk. You Run into the people. And in college I think you get a lot more. I mean, at least in our college, people were more relaxed. You shared more information. I'm sure that every college is exactly the same. Right. But like, but you did get this sort of sense of diversity running across people. And I think again, our children, I think it's extremely important for them to grow up aware of the diversity, even if they don't experience it, even if they weren't in bilingual classes at school. Simply being aware, you know, of that difference in upbringing is important, I think, for people to gain perspective. And I knew one of the things I did know that I'm not sure our kids have really run across is I knew poor, poor families.

[25:20] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[25:20] DAVID WESTERMANN: One, particularly when we lived in New Jersey where, you know, three generations of people were living in an 800 square foot home.

[25:28] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Right.

[25:29] DAVID WESTERMANN: And sharing bedrooms. And I don't know whether they would have called themselves poor, but I do know they were not as advantaged as my family were. And they weren't. They were white folk too. They weren't. This isn't, this is poor white folk. This wasn't even a race thing. This was just culturally their lives were different and it was an eye opening experience.

[25:52] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[25:53] DAVID WESTERMANN: To go over to a friend's house and play at his house and see the difference in what I grew up with and what they had and just sort of be like, oh, right. You get that sort of count your blessings moment where you're like, oh, I am kind of fortunate. I, I didn't real. Because most of my friends were economically equivalent or a lot of times better in my family. But there were one or two where you went to your friend's house and you're like, oh, I didn't realize how good I had it.

[26:27] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah. I remember feeling very jealous of the kids who lived across the main road from us in that new development that went up when I was probably 8 or 9. I remember feeling very jealous of the kids who lived in those homes. And then I remember going to visit because they still went to the same elementary and middle school as I did. I remember going to the home of one of those kids in that development and it was bare. There was no furniture in the living room. There was barely any furniture in their room, like a bed and a dresser. Maybe that was it. And I came home and I asked my mom what was going on there and she said, oh, yeah, their house poor. They put all their money into the house and they can't afford to actually like live anymore. All the money's in the house. And I think that gave me like an understand. It just opened my eyes that much more to what we had and that my parents had spent or had budgeted their money for a house that was. And we've talked about that with our house. Right. The house we live in now. A house that they can live in.

[27:55] DAVID WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[27:55] ALLISON WESTERMANN: A house they could improve bit by bit over the years. A house they could expand and contract within, change the purpose and function of different rooms within the house and not.

[28:13] DAVID WESTERMANN: Go broke and just generally have stuff.

[28:15] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah. And have stuff in the house. And we could still travel because both of my. Both sets of grandparents lived in Florida and that was not a cheap trip. Still not a cheap trailer. And I think I didn't realize until that moment when I went to my other friend's house across the street, I didn't realize how good I had it. Yeah, I was jealous. I wanted a bigger house because I thought a bigger house would make me happier. As a kid.

[28:50] DAVID WESTERMANN: It's funny how you think automatically bigger house means more money and at some level it does, but it doesn't always mean a better quality of life.

[28:57] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Right. Yeah.

[28:58] DAVID WESTERMANN: And it's. That is a hard adulting moment.

[29:02] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Right.

[29:02] DAVID WESTERMANN: I think as a kid you still don't even gain much perspective on it. But as a grown up, you can look at it and it's. It's funny that, like, how much, I don't want to say, but perspective on things, right. Like how much. How much you don't know about a person's situation that you do know about your own situation. Pay. Right. Pay inequality is sometimes difficult to wrap your mind around because when you live in our home, right. Our mortgage is whatever. Let's just for sake of argument, say our mortgage is $1,000 a month. Right. So when your mortgage is only $1,000 a month and if you make as combined income $100,000 a year, it's a big difference than when your mortgage is $2,000 a month and you make a combined income of 150,000, you'd think, oh, that's a. You know, those work out the same way, but they don't. And it's weird how you do. You look at homes and you look at things and you do your own math and you look at other folks and you just sort of wonder. You gain that perspective as an adult, but just things aren't always what they look like. Right. Like you can't just give someone a number and say, oh, his dad makes six figures, they must be rich. No, there's so much that goes into it. You don't know whether they're paying for, for grandma's health care or paying off student debt. Paying off student debt. You don't know if they've got to cover. I mean, they might have an uncle or, or so, you know, they might have another person, an addiction. They might have, you know, disability. Like there's so much that goes into it that you can't just look at a house and say, those people are rich. Right. You can't just hear somebody's, you know, income and go, oh, they must be. There's so much that goes into it.

[31:01] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[31:02] DAVID WESTERMANN: That it's hard to understand as a kid. And I, we don't, we don't talk a lot about money with our kids. And I try to, like, even with Sam, right. He's 14, I, I try to talk about finances and help him understand the value of a dollar. Right. And how money works. And I, I tell him about loans and that basically every loan is a scam, which. I know, I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory. I don't mean it to be a conspiracy theory. I just mean it to, to so that he understands. You have to think about each other. You gotta plan ahead. You have to plan each loan. And they're not, they're not all a scam. Right. Like car loans, mortgages, I feel like, are fairly standard things that people have. But it's important, I think, to scare him a little bit into second guessing.

[31:57] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[31:58] DAVID WESTERMANN: What am I really getting into here?

[32:00] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[32:00] DAVID WESTERMANN: What does this loan really mean in the long term for my financial stability?

[32:07] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[32:07] DAVID WESTERMANN: And so I, I do, I talk about him with him occasionally about, about loans, finances, investments. And I can't give him any really.

[32:16] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Great advice or I mean, obviously how many investments.

[32:19] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. Like, yeah, clearly I'm good at that. But you know, I do, I try to offer him at least perspective because I think, I don't think there'd be any point in talking about that with an 8 year old and even a 14 year old who doesn't have a job yet. There's always so much perspective you can give them beyond just sort of like blanket advice on things. And so just keep in mind this, that or the other thing. And it's hard. Right. Getting back to the kids. Right. Getting back to having kids.

[32:49] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[32:50] DAVID WESTERMANN: Teachable moments are often hard to recognize.

[32:53] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And I often feel like, kick yourself later. Oh, I could have said.

[32:57] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. And I think back on the things I learned from my parents and they weren't teachable moments. A Lot of the time, they weren't things. I think my parents realized they were teaching me.

[33:08] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Yeah.

[33:08] DAVID WESTERMANN: They were just crap. My dad said so, and I think. I think. I try to, like, I hope. I hope the crap his dad says and stuff that there are kids will. Will walk away with and will be formative and meaningful and useful to them.

[33:30] ALLISON WESTERMANN: So.

[33:30] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. I hope that, you know, it's. It's hard to know. Right. It's hard to know.

[33:36] ALLISON WESTERMANN: It's hard to know what lessons they're learning.

[33:38] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right. Are we good parents or. I know. I know we're not bad parents. I know there's. There's a pretty. There's a bar somewhere where, you know, if you've dipped under it, you're a bad parent. Right. We don't. We don't hit our kids. We keep them in clean clothes and stuff like that. Like, I feel like we. We're certainly not bad parents, but are the world's greatest parents.

[33:58] ALLISON WESTERMANN: I mean, I'm not sure I'm aiming for greatest.

[34:01] DAVID WESTERMANN: Well, we have a mug that says number one dad and number one mom.

[34:05] ALLISON WESTERMANN: So clearly we can't be the number. They haven't had any other parents.

[34:12] DAVID WESTERMANN: So I think the idea that. I hope. The idea that we worry about what.

[34:17] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Type of parents we are is an indication.

[34:20] DAVID WESTERMANN: Is an indication that at least we're making the effort and hope we are kids will be worse off for having us as parents.

[34:28] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Well, I'm glad that you are my partner in parenting, because I can't imagine doing this alone or with anyone else. I think you've been. It's been amazing being a parent with you and watching you grow as a parent, and our. Watching our relationship change, too, and going through those early years when Sam was very little and not sleeping and, like, just feeling out the responsibilities. And then, like. And then Dina comes along, and we had gotten so used to things being a certain way, and then she shook everything up again and feeling a little bit, like, put out by that and, like, resentful. And a small piece of me was like, oh, I was sleeping through the night, and then I did this to myself. Why did I do that? But she's such a treasure. And the way that they get along with each other, I think, well, you know, when they get along with each other. But I can't imagine being a parent without you and without, you know, without the support and modeling that you do of what parenting is supposed to look like. And I don't know. I. Thank you.

[36:00] DAVID WESTERMANN: I certainly wouldn't want to do it alone. I suppose I could do it with someone else. Particularly if they were richer and younger.

[36:09] ALLISON WESTERMANN: Walking on thin ice there, babe. Dig, dig, dig.

[36:13] DAVID WESTERMANN: Right.

[36:15] ALLISON WESTERMANN: As we always say. No, I'm grateful for you. And I'm grateful that we're parenting together.

[36:23] DAVID WESTERMANN: I'm grateful for you, too. Yeah.

[36:25] ALLISON WESTERMANN: And I'm grateful that we had this conversation. I think it's been really nice. Really? Love. You're not gonna say thank you for the conversation?

[36:36] DAVID WESTERMANN: No.

[36:39] ALLISON WESTERMANN: That's a good note to end on.